When making an investment decision, KEY follows a rigorous, four-stage investment committee process enabling the firm to compare companies on a relative value basis. The firm invests opportunistically across all subsectors of the cannabis industry in search of companies it believes are backed by experienced management teams with high-growth, market-leading products and services.

“Generally speaking, investments will be made in companies which we believe are led by high-quality management teams that are competitively differentiated and highly scalable,” said Founding Partner Pete Karabas. “While the profile of the deals we target will change constantly as the market matures and our views on the relative attractiveness of the various subsectors change, our top pipeline opportunities today include companies operating in business-to-business e-commerce, cannabis testing labs, data analytics and aggregation, compliance software and cannabis delivery services.”

As the cannabis industry continues to grow, KEY Investment Partners will be well-positioned to invest in market leading cannabis companies in the ancillary space. For example, KEY recently led the Series C financing round of BDS Analytics, the market leading cannabis data aggregation and analytics firm. BDS Analytics provides subscription-based data and analytics services for the cannabis industry – the company offers retail sales tracking data, cutting-edge cannabis consumer measurement and analytics, and an unrivaled source of cannabis industry financial and economic analyses.